


Dirty Tricks

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:59:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a real Serenity holiday: hijacked action figures and blackmail. The bad ended happily. That is what Christmas means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty Tricks

_His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean.  
And you're the best thing that he's ever seen_. (Bob Dylan, "Lay Lady Lay")

 _I'm not talking of a hurried night.  
A frantic tumble and shy goodnight.  
Running home before it gets too light--  
That's not the reason that I caught your eye.  
Which has to imply, I'd be good for you.  
I'd be surprisingly good for you._ (Tim Rice, "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You" [Evita])

1  
The Verse must have rocked on its hinges. Kaylee, not hurt much but astonished, looked over at Mal, who was struggling against Book and Wash, who'd wrestled him away after he slapped Kaylee.

"I was just tryin' to help!" she said.

"Help! Don't never do that again. I'd rather we all starved first. Hell, I'd rather that I whored my ownself first before you ever did that again."

"I don't think that's what you could call a really feasible possibility," Wash said unhelpfully.

Kaylee sat down at the table and spread out the banknotes in front of her like a hand of cards. "Wasn't plannin' on any whoring," she said. "Didn't even think I was till the next morning. There was this fellow in the parts depot. Reginald. That was his name, Reginald. We was buyin' the same thing, got to talkin' about it and then just ship fittings in general. Then he heard my stomach growl and we laughed and he said, could he buy me some dinner. I said sure, and then I noticed for the first time that he had all nice clothes on. We went to a nice place. They had candles even though I bet they had electric that worked. We had some whiskey you could tell they didn't make themselves there. And then a real good meal. Before I had a chance to even look at the menu he made them bring us some chicken. Don't know when the last time was I saw any of that before."

"Ah, chicken!" Wash said nostalgically. "Although, you know, the juggling does do something for a gosling, tenderizes maybe..."

"And they had rooms there and he didn't have to get home noplace that night and me neither. He was a nice-enough lookin' fellow and he'd been sweet to me and we went upstairs and then the next morning I woke up and he was gone and he left this in the chifferobe for me. And I was glad, because the Captain's took the usual bitching and moaning about how poor we are up to Peking Opera level. So instead of keeping any of the coin for myself, I brought it all here for us to share. And look at the thanks I get."

"I'm not gonna thank you for doing wrong," Mal said. "Never will."

"I didn't even break any laws! And Inara does it all the time, and you like her!"

"Maybe that's the problem," Wash said. "Mal, is there some kind of rule that it only counts if we do something illegal?"

Mal gave him a basilisk glare and turned to face Kaylee. "A-number-one first of all, ain't talking what's legal, I'm talking what's right. And like ain't approve of. And she ain't you. And you ain't her. Dong ma?"

2  
Jayne looked around the shuttle. It sure looked different--no, it didn't LOOK different, but it felt different, now that he wasn't in imminent fear for his life.

"I'd like to ask you a favor," he said.

Inara looked up, for once blessing Mal's "no servicing crew" rule.

"Oh, not like that," he said. "Ain't about you, really. See, it's the Doc. I purely would like to pay him court, but I can see how far that wouldn't be getting what with all the mean things he says about me all the time. So, what I want to know is...how are you at ape training? They teach you anything about that at the Companion Academy?

It would take more than that to make a Companion look surprised, but it gave Inara pause. It wasn't as if Jayne had asked her for date-rape drugs, after all, and the young doctor's love life was one fight in which she didn't think she had a dog. It did briefly cross her mind that an excess of civility could make Jayne less efficient, and life even more dangerous than it was already. But Jayne's chronic budget deficit of civility left plenty of room to operate.

"All right," she said. "Please sit down."

Jayne plopped himself down on the sofa.

"Ah..." Inara said gently. "The essence of good manners is restraint, to behave in an unhurried, graceful manner."

Jayne nodded, memorizing. He stood up again, and did a little better this time.

"'Kay, so if I was going to save up some coin to buy the Doc a fancy dinner, like he's used to, like that Reg-I-nald person bought for little Kaylee, I'd gotta remember to sit down like I was squeezin' a trigger instead of like I was kickin' down a door."

"An excellent analogy," Inara said gravely.

"But I'm scared I wouldn't know what to do. I mean, when they bring them Whores Devours," (Inara blinked, and then re-compiled the phrase) "I wouldn't know whether to pick 'em up in my hand or use my quick-little-boys or a fork. And they might have, you know, all those forks."

Fighting down an impulse to say that the small concealable weapons go to the outside of the place setting, she said instead, "Oh, that's the easiest part! If there are lots of things to eat with, you just take the one on the outside and move in. And if you make a mistake, put it down and pick up the right one. Or just look self-confident."

"Well, how'd ya know if you made a mistake? Less everybody was sneerin' at you and then you'd have to deck someone, which probably ain't polite."

"The essence of true courtesy is to make others feel at ease," Inara said. "But I admit, I've met plenty of snobs who were only interested in making other people look bad!"

"And I wouldn't know what to order, place like that, they say it's a meal, but half the time they don't even bring you no rice. And if you try to pay extra to get some, they say they don't got none like it's your fault for wantin' it."

Inara smiled. "You could have a bowl before you leave! That's what I always do, before a fancy party." They laughed together.

3  
The comm. boomed. "Mal, wave for you from Badger. You wanna take it?"

Mal thought for a moment. In seconds, he assembled a number of scenarios of chicane and betrayal, but he didn't think Badger could actually shoot him over the comm. Anyway, Kaylee had proved to him that the money problems had gone past acute into critical. "Sure," he said. "I'll be right in."

"Want me to leave?" Wash asked when Mal reached the flight deck.

"Nah," Mal said. "Got a feeling that this'll be something I need you to hear about." He always trusted his instincts, the instincts that had gotten him where he was. If he'd moved another step along in the analysis, he might have parsed out "where he was" as broke, in a desperately dodgy spaceship, and an assortment of shrapnel in his body from friend and foe alike. Which was why he tried not to drag his plans out too many steps in advance.

"Mal!" Badger said, the image on the small screen breaking unpredictably into bargello bands. "Greetings of the season to you. I've been approached in connection with a job that takes a big, big pair of wrinklies and a small, small cerebrum. And that infinite balls-to-brains ratio just screams out 'Malcolm Reynolds,' dunnit? And so I said to meself, this caper is way too hot for me, I'd rather just say safely on the sidelines and get a tasty piece for consummating the marriage."

"Sweet!" Mal said when he heard the proposal. "Yeah, I'm on it. Wash's right here, give him the coordinates."

"You aren't even going to think about it?"

"With what? You just called me a decerebrate anatomical preparation."

When the wave went off, Mal said, "Wash? You in?"

"I guess so. I'll ask Zoe."

"Tell ya what. Why don't we keep this tight--you, me, and Kaylee--so there'll be just three shares. Should be plenty for you to buy a real nice present for Zoe and still have some coin in your pocket. A man should always have a few credits of his own to jingle."

"Won't she notice when I'm gone?"

"It's a dark-time job anyway," Mal said. "We'll take the shuttle. If she wakes up, say you're going down to the kitchen for a glass of milk. She'll go right back to sleep, and you'll be back 'fore she wakes up again anyhow."

4  
Simon didn't mean to eavesdrop, but when he saw that the Cortex feeds were crossed, and saw some names that he knew... He got out his encyclopedia, checked a few facts, and spent fifteen minutes or so deep in thought before Kaylee came into the infirmary to see what was up with the Cortex links.

"Yehsooa, Simon, don't tell me you're gonna bust my hump about that too." Kaylee said, wondering if he was jealous, and if she'd done it to make him jealous or just because she was randy and wanted a good tumble.

"Not at all," he said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with a person--woman or man--having a healthy sexual appetite. But it made me realize how important it is to tell you in so many words of one syllable exactly how much business of mine it isn't the way you choose to exercise it. I mean, I like you. In an abstract sense having nothing to do with me personally, I recognize that you're a pretty girl. I like Inara, too. My sister is the person in the entire 'Verse that I'm closest too. I even like Zoe, to the extent that you can like someone who terrifies you. And I hate to be a cliché, but I'm one of those men for whom liking girls demonstrates conclusively that I don't like girls."

"Awww, Simon!" she said. "I bet if you just met the right one..."

He shook his head. "Kaylee, I had so much missionary work performed on me that in certain quarters I was known as the Pagan Baby."

5  
"It's a somewhat delicate matter," Simon said, leaning toward Mal to speak softly. "Okay, that problem yesterday with our downloads?"

"Yeah," Mal said. "Damn fool huin dans. Fellow who travels as much as I do can't be expected to get the right date on all his transfers..."

"Anyway. I'm afraid that when Kaylee and I were trying to....rewire...anyway, the whiffynet feed from Inara's shuttle was crossed over into the medbay. And until I realized that was what'd happened, I read a few things I probably shouldn't have. And she got an inquiry from one of her regulars, asking her if she'd be near Edgbaston."

"Yeah, I told her since there wasn't much going on" (and, Mal forebore to mention, because Edgbaston was quite close to Maundy) "It'd be fine with me, if she took the shuttle to pick up Mr. Regular and then brung him back here so's he could sit her on top of the Christmas tree or whatever jingles his bells."

"Well, the thing of it is," Simon said, "Is that I recognized him. His name is Archer Leverken. And he's a politician. How much do you know about Edgbastonian politics?"

"I'm bored already," Mal said.

"Then let me speed this up for you. When I was little, my amah--who in retrospect was not only not shriveled and elderly but must have been about twenty-two and was built like a brick teahouse, which has caused me to re-appraise my father's entire involvement in personnel policies at our compound--anyway, she used to say that a problem is just the backside of an opportunity." He paused, caught his breath, and said, "Captain Reynolds, the time has come for us to sodomize an opportunity."

"Let me guess. You want to blackmail him. What've you got against the fella, anyway?"

"He's on the Board of Directors of the Academy," Simon said. "Okay, maybe he just turns up once a year and drinks their scotch and cashes the check. But it still makes him responsible for signing off on a place where they cut into the brains of children."

"Can't see why he'd care, I mean consortin' around with a highly respectable person like Inara."

"But you see, he's not just a politician, he's a purity crusader, leader of the Family Values party. You might say he slept his way to the top--he's married to the daughter of the last Party Leader. They've got five children. He's been in the National Assembly for ages, he's entrenched in the most powerful committees, doles out millions of credits from the char-siu barrel. But Edgbaston has a coalition government. If he resigns his seat, or if enough of his constituents demand a new election, there's a very good chance that one of the opposing parties will take the seat. And that, in turn, could lead to the fall of the government."

"La-de-da," Mal said. "What do you want to do, dig a crater for the ship and sit there till the election foofaraw gets hashed out? And be a sitting target?"

"Well, no. One of my University classmates, oddly enough, has settled in Edgbaston. He's...his name is Wilton Demourest.... a campaign manager for one of those other parties. If we provide the ammunition, he can take the shooting from there. I took the liberty of contacting him...."

"You don't think he's going to sell you out, once he looks in the Alumni bulletin and sees the Wanted poster?"

"The thought did cross my mind. But I know a few things about him...well, you know, in our University days he was the Go-To Guy for pharmaco-fun...and if we meet him on his turf, and set up very careful payment arrangements, and all he knows is that I'm with you and you're somewhere out in the black...oh, and I forgot to mention, he offered thirty thousand credits."

"Mother of God!" Mal said reverently.

6  
Mal did not enjoy the portion of the meeting devoted to reminiscences about Ditch Day pranks and whatever-happened-to, but he did enjoy double-teaming Demourest until an elaborate double-blind procedure was launched. The thirty thousand credits went into escrow; or rather, twenty-nine thousand, five hundred went into escrow, five hundred went into Mal's pocket. To Demourest, five hundred credits was more or less a lunch check, so he wouldn't mind losing it; and to Simon, the money wasn't the point anyway.

"You said we were coming downplanet for Christmas shopping," Simon said. "Hadn't we better buy something?"

"Bah, humbug!" Mal said, but nevertheless did buy some nuts and dried fruits for the ship, and a flowered straw hat for Kaylee. Simon thought it looked like a horse bonnet, but he suspected that if he voiced this opinion there would be back-channel to Kaylee. They strolled through the Christmas Market, sipping hot spiced red wine from a street vendor. Simon thought that it tasted odd in a plastic go-kup, but as far as Mal was concerned, hey, hot wine with stuff in it, what could be bad?

There was an artist's supply store, where Simon bought River a mosaic kit. He thought that making something out of smashed things might be therapeutic.

Simon waited until his path crossed Inara's, to give her the shuttle's share of the fragrant garlands of evergreen and its sprig of mistletoe. Somehow, he didn't feel comfortable taking them to her in the shuttle.

7  
Inara gave a graceful wave of her hand, then closed the door to Jayne's bunk (where one wall was still devoted to pinups, but now art reproductions and moonlit mountain landscapes rather than girlie pictures). A smell of jasmine incense and Lapsang Souchong wafted into the corridor.

Mal stopped dead in the corridor. "What'd that big dumb ape do to you? I'll break his neck."

"What *my friend* did," Inara said, enunciating clearly despite her clenched teeth, "Was to prepare me an excellent bowl of tea. We listened to some music, and talked about his family. I think it's admirable that Jayne still retains such affection for his father despite the man's deserting his wife and children to set up housekeeping with his mistress and raise a second family."

"I never knew that."

"Of course not," Inara said. "You never asked. And he never trusted you enough to tell you. You damn fool."

8  
"Wanna stay up late, Kaylee? I got a little job, just you and me and Wash can handle it, an hour, maybe not even two hours, in all. Fast run in the middle of the night. Big pay-off, just three shares. Wash takes the shuttle over to Nowhere Plaza, you lower me down on the Peter Pan harness and help me set up the nets. I go down and talk to the fella, I show him the money, he shows me the merch, we pull up the nets and pull up me, and we blast it the hell outta there to Maundy and my other fella pays me off for the stuff. Then we fly home long before anyone notices we were gone."

"Jayne comin' along?"

"Naw, he ain't. This is a special Christmas present just for the three of us. Kaylee, I never want you to be in want. You ever leave here, which God forbid you do--if there was any, that is--you got skills to sell. You don't gotta sell your body. And we don't need Jayne for this nohow. Nobody to hit--though I'll manage to flap my coat open to show the pistol, and he'll see that you and Wash got guns. And no heavy lifting. It's just a few crates, and they don't weigh much."

"Lightweight, just a few cartons, lots of money. Ain't Drops, is it? Cause I won't countenance your dealing in that."

"Would I do something like that?"

"In a Londinium minute," Kaylee said. "That's why I gotta ask."

"I'm wounded. Nope, it's not even harmful. Well, not politically correct, but we don't worry about that none, round here, do we?"

9  
Inara re-read the local paper she had Waved up (keeping in touch with local news was important). Her cheeks flamed in fury, and she bustled through the ship until her path crossed Mal's. "You're looking even smugger than usual," she said.

"And I might say the same for you, my dear. Meanin' to talk to you anyhow. I was wondering, could I borrow one of your small paintbrushes and just a tiny dab of red paint and one of blue?"

"I'll think about it. In your case, might that be due to a sudden rush of prosperity to the head?"

"Might could."

"And that would be in connection with...?"

"That's no more of my business than your whoring is of mine, but I sorta took some of your own advice. Remember, you said that our best score was them little bobble-headed geisha dolls? Well, I stayed in the doll business and extended the line to some holiday jollification."

"Mal, you sold a carload of stolen action figures that were supposed to go to an orphanage!"

"Stolen?" Mal said righteously. "They fell off the mule. Anyway, it was just a publicity device for Blue Sun. And I betcha that some of the kids on Maundy that got 'em was orphans too. Maybe at least one, anyway." They'd have to be rich orphans, what with 20 platinum each he got from the fence, but that wasn't beyond all possibility.

"The Blue Sun truck driver--who was a decorated veteran, by the way--was left on the side of the road without his pants or his boots and had to walk to the nearest truck stop to get help."

"Awww!" Mal said. "No Good Samaritans? Another one of them Christmas miracles. Heart warming. Say, did Simon give you some of that missiletoe he brung back from Edgbaston Market?.

"He's obviously not a botanist. Actually he gave me some sprigs of a closely related plant. And if you stand under it I get to turn you into a Peking Opera soprano. Using the grapefruit spoon that I keep hanging around my neck."

Might almost be worth it just to see her fish it out of her cleavage...Mal thought.

"You are beneath contempt," she said.

"Naaah," he said. "Masculine fella like me? I'm on top of contempt."

Mal didn't have anything he particularly had to do, so he charged, head down, toward the kitchen. Book sat there, waiting for his mug of peppermint tea to cool.

"Damn fool thing to call it!" Mal said. "Even a rancher knows that plants ain't got toes. And if they did, wouldn't look like missiles anyway."

Book folded his hands and steepled the index fingers. "Something appears to be troubling you, Captain."

Mal gave him such a filthy look that Book stood up, abandoning the tea. "You're welcome on this boat, Preacher. Freud ain't."

10  
At 11:30, Book stood up, yawned theatrically, and said, "Well, I'm heading back to my cabin now. Expect I'll be up for a while, though."

After a mass exit, Zoe squinted at the dusty bottle that Mal fetched to render the evening more festive. "Didn't there used to be a worm in that?" she asked.

"That mean you don't want any?" Mal asked, pouring out three shot glasses.

"Hell, no." Zoe slammed down the shooter and held out the glass, Oliver Twistishly, for an encore.

"What about me?" River asked.

"It's only fair," Simon said, taking another shot glass and emptying a drachm of tequila from his own glass, and handing it to her. "She's not really a child any more," he told Mal.

A couple of shots later, Mal got out the mah-jongg board.

A couple of hundred credits later, River was restive, looking toward the door.

"It's all right," Simon said. "Go if you want. I won't be angry."

"You ain't goin'?" Mal asked.

Simon shook his head. "No, I'm...well, like you two, I guess. At first you think that God must be amazing, how cleverly the body is put together. But after the how-many-I-don't-know-thousandth time you have your hand down in the middle of someone's guts, which suddenly aren't inside any more, then you start to think, that if God exists, and he lets this happen, then...well, you just can't be on his side. Because, what's he going to do to you? Kill you? Send you to Hell? Look at what he does to his friends."

"Zoe, left a Christmas present for you," Mal said. "Might want to intercept it before Wash gets back, though. He probably wouldn't appreciate it the way you will."

Hanging on their cabin door was an Alliance Al twelve-inch action figure. With its tiny lips smeared with red and a blotch of purple on the belly of its dress grey jacket. In lieu of Dress Grey trousers, the little figure wore a tutu. Made out of the silk from the Parachute Corps Adventure Set. The figure hung by its sturdy neck from a noose made out of a rubber band. After Zoe stopped laughing, she took the doll down. "Psychotic," she said, and opened the cabin door.

Spread out on the bed was a bias-cut ice-blue blue satin dress that showed that Wash had no real idea of the dimensions of any part of her body (and she felt sorry for the peculiarly constituted individual, probably a hopeless invalid, who *would* be able to fit into it), but she loved it anyway. Even though she couldn't zip it up for him to take it off her.

11  
A little before midnight, Book lit the three white beeswax candles and fussed a little with the plate of bread cubes and the tiny glasses of wine.

He had two new Bibles. He had a fine large one that an embarrassed Simon bought him, replete with commentary that he found a lot more congenial than River's emendations. The other was a smaller one presented by Jayne. Book usually used the smaller one, although he was aware that the gift followed closely after Jayne had spent the night in a hotel.

Although he had performed far too many funerals for his liking, Book always read out the burial service from his prayer book. It didn't seem reverent to rely on memory when he might leave out a word that would bring comfort to the mourners. But that night, on a happier occasion, he didn't need to read the story that had worn itself deep in his memory by frequent repetition.

His congregation drew their chairs into a circle and held hands. "For it came to pass, in the time of Caesar Augustus, that a decree went out that the whole world should be enrolled...."

Book blessed the bread, and lifted the plate. "The Body of Christ, Kaylee," he said. "Body of Christ," she said, her eyes sparkling. "Body of Christ, Wash. Body of Christ, Jayne. Oh, hello, dear....welcome."

Jayne slugged down the tablespoonful of wine as Kaylee and Wash sipped; so Book did the same, to keep Jayne from feeling awkward.

River took up a couple of pieces of bread and rotated them this way and that. "I thought something would happen," she said. "But it didn't," and drifted out again.

That cast rather a damper on the proceedings, until Book clasped Kaylee's and Wash's hands and began to sing, "Angels we have heard on high..."

Jayne gave a big, sweet smile. "Hey, I bet all the cattle are kneelin' now..."

12  
As Christmas Eve passed into Christmas Day, the ship was silent except for the hum of the engines and life support systems.

Even in their sleep, Wash and Zoe snuggled and tickled one another.

In Inara's shuttle, she and her client slept, under the rapt gaze of the wide-angle lens of the camera concealed in the mistletoe. (He decided to stay over, neatly avoiding Christmas with his shrew and brats, because they didn't expect him at home anyway because he told them he was going to Maundy for that stupid orphanage photo op, and there was no point in going to Maundy if it wasn't going to happen, was there?)

Two dark heads rested on the kitchen table, pillowed on two pristine white shirtsleeves and two dusty red ones, a mah-jongg tile intaglioed into each of their cheeks like a springerle mold. The last few drops of tequila from the tilted bottle dripped onto Simon's hair.

A creature was stirring, as River paced the catwalks. Then she went back to the solid floor and knelt, throwing the cubes. "God doesn't do this with the world," she said. "Plural, dice. Singular, die."

13  
"I was gonna give this to my Mama, next time I saw her," Jayne said, holding out a small brown paper bag. "Cept, I don't know when I'm gonna see her, and anyway she don't know I was gonna give it to her so what the eye don't see the heart don't mourn. I can get her something else before I see her. And she'd probably just as soon have a bottle of 'shine anyway."

"You have to understand that she's had a hard life," Inara said. "You *do* understand. We've talked about it. And thank you--they used to call this Boxing Day, you know."

"For once, I don't feel like hittin' nobody."

"Not that kind!--putting presents in boxes and giving them to people. So thank you for observing that lovely tradition."

"I dunno," he said. "I can't say that the Doc changed any. But I changed. And so even though I wanted to be different because of him, and now I don't want him any more, I still have to thank you for making me change. And I want you to know, that now that I've got to know you you're one of the best women I ever met. And anybody who looks down on you ain't proving he's a gentleman or some kinda special. Just that he's a damn fool. Bad enough he ain't got any eyes, but it shows he ain't got no heart neither. Because you could have looked down on me for being an ignorant fool, but instead you were willing to bend down to the mud to pick me up just 'cause I asked you."

"Jayne, thank you," she said. "Merry..." (she couldn't quite bring herself to say "Christmas") "Happy Holidays." She opened the bag, and smiled broadly as she knotted the purple artificial silk scarf, printed with orange lady bugs, around her neck. "It's a lovely present. And I'm standing under the mistletoe, you know," Inara said, smiling at him as he gathered her into his arms.

14  
Mal finished spiking the eggnog for the New Year's Eve party and, remembering how sick they'd all been the year before when Wash, Zoe and Jayne all sneaked over to add a stick to the punch, locked the refrigerator. Now, Mal thought fondly, their little family was twice as large. The Shepherd appeared to be an abstemious man, River was just a kid, and Mal knew that Simon had no head for liquor (as he'd just confirmed by drinking the boy under the table...) so he wanted to keep the party survivable, especially insofar as their designated driver was likely to get his snout into the punchbowl early in the evening.

His co-conspirator, or rather the sharer in one of his conspiracies, arranged cookies on a plate as though he were placing radioactive tracers for an exploratory. "God," Mal said. "If she was that mad just finding out about the..." (he stopped, remembering that Wash and Kaylee were the only participants in the Alliance Al Affair) "that thing, I'd best hope she never finds out about...that other thing. How'd it go, Simon?"

"A little rough around the edges--I don't really know the image processing software that well except when it comes to radiology--but anyway I captured the footage from the camera, edited it down so you could see his exceptionally unattractive hairy, freckled posterior pumping away at someone who was manifestly not his wife. And I hacked in a new background so the shuttle couldn't be identified and made sure that Inara's face was erased to the point that it could not be recovered. Then I sent it--in deepest confidence, of course--to the worst tabloid rag on Edgbaston, along with a copy of the Companion's Guild invoice, with her name blacked out. Depending on how good the hacks are, though, they might be able to track the invoice back to her. "

"If they do that, she'll get in trouble with the Guild. "Cos Guild business is supposed to stay with the Guild."

"Yes," Simon said distantly. "If that happens--and I hope it won't--well, your stock with Inara will be trading at an all-time low."

"So you, what, you did this just to push her out of the way?"

"Many would say that I pushed her out of the path of an oncoming train. By courageously interposing my body. And not 'just.' You--we--you--needed the money. I got to do something nowhere near bad enough to someone I hate."

"Not a very nice thing to do."

"Mallllllcolm," Simon began, in a voice that showed Mal a previously unsuspected connection between his name and "languor," "Perhaps the greatest barrier between all the mad, wild, orgiastic sex we've been having and reality is your severe overestimation of just how nice I am. It's true that sometimes the pretense of niceness will get me things that I can't buy with 'smart' or 'rich' or 'pretty.' But the bottom line is that eventually, I get what I want." _What am I? _Simon asked himself. _A man or a hamster?___

Simon took a half-step forward, into Mal's radius of personal space. Mal stepped back a little. Simon took a full step forward, and Mal frowned. He felt checkmated--that all he could do would be to grab Simon or get backed up against the wall of his own bought-and-paid-for boat. And either way, he was just playing Simon's game. (It took awhile for multiple choices like "push back" and "tell him to go away" occurred to him, and by then it was too late, and his shoulderblades had already hit the wall.)

Even though it was a perfectly good shirt--a few grease spots and the elbows were a little thin--Simon put one hand on each half of the collar--rubbing his knuckles up and down against Mal's collarbones a bit first--and ripped. Buttons flew out like shrapnel.

Simon savored the look of astonishment on Mal's face.

"Well, I've made my point," Simon said. "I don't think it's necessary to assassinate your pants too." He rested his hand on Mal's well-muscled stomach, then shoved his hand down the front of Mal's trousers.

There was a blissfully lost look on Simon's face that Mal wanted to kiss-glue into permanency.

"So, do you want me to stop?"

"Hell, no," Mal said. "You know me. I got no sort of judgment even when I ain't randy."

"What do you feel like?"

"An opportunity, I guess," Mal said. "Except, hope that don't mean I get to knock but once."


End file.
